


and the bells are ringing out

by feminist14er



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Holiday Fic Exchange, Holidays, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5436569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>clarke gets snowed in over the holidays. with company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the bells are ringing out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alrightlupin](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alrightlupin).



> For alrightlupin - Happy Holidays, dear! Thank you to everyone at bellarkesecretsanta for organizing this!

It’s been snowing for three days, Clarke has already canceled her plans to go home and see her mother and Marcus, and she’s been hunkered down under the blankets hiding from the world at large. Most of her other friends are either at home with their parents, in some warm tropical place, or across the country where they don’t get lake effect snow.

She’s debating pausing Planet Earth and getting up for some more cereal when she hears the knock at her door. She’s tempted to ignore it, honestly, because really – what kind of nutjob is out in this snowstorm two days before Christmas? Still, it could be UPS, or some other semi-important thing, which is why she sighs and throws off the blankets.

She doesn’t have a peephole (yeah, okay, it’s not super safe, but whatever, she’s never had a problem. People usually call before they come over, and she rarely answers the door otherwise), so the attractive curly-haired man on the other side of the door (no UPS uniform in sight) is a surprise.

“Hello?” she asks, looking him over. He’s bundled up, like any sensible person would be, dark curls peeking out from under the brim of a beanie. He’s got a duffel bag in one hand and a messenger back across his back, and – yeah, he’s hot. She has no idea why he’s here or who he is, but he’s super attractive.

“Clarke?” he asks. She nods. “Oh good, I was worried I had the wrong place. I’m Bellamy, Octavia’s brother?” 

“Er, hi,” she says, extending her hand. She looks at him more closely, notices the underlying similarities in his and Octavia’s bone structure, and smiles at the familiarity. “Can I, um – can I help you with something?” She’s heard about Bellamy, of course. She and Octavia were close friends in college (O’s one of the friends across the country), but the brother she heard about was always back in Octavia’s home town, working as a teacher while he helped put Octavia through college. She’s wracking her brain to remember if O mentioned that her brother was now on the east coast when he interrupts her frantic thinking.

“Um, I was supposed to fly back west to see O for Christmas, but – “ he gestures to the weather, and she cracks a grin. “When my flight got canceled, she told me I should come here. You’re, uh. You’re closer to the airport, and it was kind of a struggle for the taxi driver to get here anyway.”

Clarke sighs. Her phone had been in the other room, on vibrate, so of course she hadn’t heard it. She’s not going to turn him away, or anything, but – it would have been nice to have some more warning. Still, she smiles at him, gestures for him to come inside. “Of course, sorry – I didn’t hear my phone, but you’re most welcome.”

She closes the door behind him, gestures around her. “So, this is my place. I’ve got an extra bedroom, so you can stay there, no sleeping on the couch. I was planning on being at my mom’s, so I didn’t really decorate, sorry.”

He shrugs. “My place looks about the same, to be honest. You know O, she always goes all out on the holiday decorations, so I just sort of enjoy it from a distance without putting in any effort.” He gives her a lopsided grin, and she tamps down on the effect it has on her stomach.

She thinks she watches him for maybe too long, but she smiles again, says “Well, I’ll leave you to get settled. I’m just watching Planet Earth, but I can wear headphones if you want to be out in the living room.”

He nods, thanks her, and wanders toward her guest room whiles she fights the urge to bang her head against a wall.

\--

It’s after a frantic and hushed conversation with Octavia that she feels like she finally has control over the situation again. Octavia sounds delighted on the phone that Bellamy followed through on her suggestion, reminds Clarke that she’d told Clarke to look him up when she moved into the area. It clearly slipped Clarke’s mind in all her effort to get settled, and Octavia sounds positively gleeful over the phone when she tells Clarke that it’s a great opportunity for them to get acquainted (Clarke thinks that she’s a little _too_ gleeful for this whole situation, and that’s when she starts yelling at her in a frantic whisper about her intentions. O just cackles).

Anyway, she curls back up under her blankets, headphones in and Planet Earth back on. Bellamy seems to mostly be camped out in his room for now, but she’s had annoying roommates before, and even if this is just temporary, she doesn’t want to be _that asshole_.

At the end of the episode, though, she starts to feel restless, and decides that, if they’re stuck together for Christmas, they might as well make some attempts at festivity. She doesn’t have a Christmas tree, not even a fake one, and there’s no way they’re getting one now, but she can make cookies.

She’s rooting around in her cabinets for ingredients when she hears Bellamy walk out into the living room and peer into the kitchen. “What’re you working on?” he asks.

“I figured we might as well at least pretend to be in the holiday spirit, so I’m making Christmas cookies,” she answers from inside the cabinet.

“Cool, need any help?”

“Nah. It’s mostly a one-person job. But you can hang out and chat if you want,” she replies.

She assumes he nods, because when she finally finds the sprinkles she was after, he’s sitting down watching her with amusement plain on his face.

She starts mixing the ingredients together, sort of expecting working in companionable silence, but she’s pleasantly surprised when he starts with, “So, Octavia said you’re in grad school?” 

She nods, squinting down at her recipe. “Yeah, just starting a PhD in art history, actually.” She glances up at him. “What about you? Last time I heard, you were teaching?”

“Yeah, I did that until Octavia graduated. I’m actually just about to finish a PhD in history,” he says easily.

She’s a little surprised that Octavia didn’t pass this information along, but they must be at different schools, (there are like, ten in the area, it would not be hard to be in different places), because she thinks she would have at least crossed paths on campus with him. She thinks she should recognize him from something other than her memories of Octavia’s pictures, so she assumes he’s elsewhere. 

“So, you’re working on your dissertation?” she asks, mixing the dry ingredients into the wet.

“Yeah. Just doing a lot of reading right now, but I’m hopefully defending at the end of the school year. There’s a lot of writing to be done in the next semester to make that happen,” he says wryly.

She snorts. “I feel like every time someone tells me about their dissertation, it’s with those words and that tone. I know it’s going to be exciting when I’m at that stage, but also – yuck.”

He laughs. “Yeah, yuck is a pretty accurate summation of how I feel on a day to day basis.” She glances at him, smiles at the way the smile on his face crinkles his eyes. “Seriously, though, I feel like everyone jokes about how grad school is the worst, but grad school is actually the worst.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that impression. I mean, yes, it’s a super privileged position to get to go after whatever arcane knowledge you’re into, but – yeah, the drive it takes is pretty exhausting.”

He nods thoughtfully. “That’s true. I’m never sure if it seems particularly hard to me because I’m a first-gen college kid, or if it’s actually as hard as it seems.” He shrugs. “Like, no one in my family would ever have thought that this was cool, or even a good idea, but I like it, I guess. It just also sucks. It’s pretty weird,” he laughs.

She nods along, unable to keep the smile off her face. “I obviously can’t attest to what it’s like as a first-gen student, but I feel you on the family thing.”

He raises an eyebrow and she sighs a little. “Yeah, so – my mom’s a doctor, right, and my dad was an engineer, both super practical jobs. My mom thinks becoming an art historian is a one-way ticket to a lot of student debt and no job prospects. It’s not that she’s wrong, necessarily, but it’s a gamble I’m willing to take, I guess.” 

He nods. “What about your dad?”

“He probably would have supported me, but he died three years ago, so I don’t really know. It was before I went into my Master’s.” 

“I feel that,” he says. “My mom would have probably been proud, while also thinking that it was totally impractical.”

Clarke smiles. She knows about the Blake family situation, of course, from being friends with Octavia, but it’s interesting to hear another take on Aurora, since Octavia didn’t really have much of a chance to know her well.

They chat a little longer, mostly while Clarke gets the cookies baked, and then lapse into truly companionable silence, Bellamy eventually putting on some quiet music and reading while Clarke waits for the cookies to cool.

\--

It’s still dumping snow several hours later when Bellamy asks if she has any Christmas lights.

“No?” she answers. “Why?”

“I thought it would be fun to put them up,” he answers.

The snort that follows is completely involuntary, and she winces a little bit internally at her own derision. Still, “Fun,” she says. “In the worst snowstorm in five years.”

He smiles at that, shrugs. “Yeah, okay, fun probably isn’t the right word. Festive, though, right? We’re going for festive.”

“Okay, yes, festive is good,” she answers. “But maybe not when it’s snowing so hard you can’t see a foot in front of you.” She considers for a minute. “I do have lights though, and we could put them up inside.” 

He grins, and she goes to get the lights.

Thirty minutes later, they’re collapsed on the sofa, lights strung up around the room. They bickered casually as Bellamy hung them up, arguing about placement and tacks going into the wall, Bellamy sarcastically offering to patch her walls up later, Clarke primly answering that yes, that would be most appreciated.

“It looks nice,” she says. “Thanks for suggesting that we put them up.”

“No worries,” he answers. “I thought it might be more fun this way, make Christmas in spite of everything.”

“Make fetch happen?” she jokes, looking over at him. He’s got his arms splayed out across the top of her sofa, showing off the lean muscles. She feels her stomach flip over again, and she folds her arms across her chest to contain herself.

“Something like that, yeah,” he laughs.

\--

They eat pasta for dinner and go their separate ways, Clarke to her room (hey, she’s dedicated to finishing Planet Earth, okay, and her bed is more comfortable than the couch), and Bellamy to his. She smiles at him when she bumps into him in the hallway when she goes in to brush her teeth, but she feels – well, she feels like she has a crush on her friend’s brother, but she also feels like she used to in the beginning stages of having a new roommate: overly polite, very smiley, and not really herself.

It’s fine, of course it is, but it’s pretty weird, all in all.

Still, she has no trouble falling asleep that night, curled under a ridiculous number of blankets, reveling in the quiet hush the snow has brought to the world. It’s one of the things she loves best about snow, and it soothes her to sleep easily. 

\--

She wakes up in the middle of the night, and she’s _fucking freezing_ , in spite of all of her blankets (and her flannel pants, wool socks, and long sleeved shirt. She knows she’s a granny, okay). There’s a shadow in her doorway, and she can feel herself freeze up at first, before she recognizes the shape of Bellamy highlighted by the street lamp.

She sits halfway up, looks at him as he shuffles in. “Power’s out,” he whispers.

“You warm enough?” She asks, looking at his sock clad feet, taking in his long-sleeved shirt and boxer briefs.

“Not even close,” he answers.

She pulls her blankets aside, gestures for him to get in before all the warm air seeps out. He crawls in, lays flat on his back next to her. She stares up at the ceiling for a few minutes before gently tugging at his arm. He gives her a confused look when she nudges him, and she says, “Listen, it’s cold. We’re going to be much warmer if we cuddle, so get to it.”

He laughs. “Bossy. I like it.” He curls around her, and she can feel the warmth from his body seeping into her own skin, and she can feel her cold, tense muscles start to unwind. He fusses around for a little bit, clearly at a loss as to what to do with his right arm, and finally she tugs it around herself, even interlaces their fingers.

“This okay?” she asks, hopes he doesn’t say no.

He nods, and she can feel the brush of his nose against her hair. It’s oddly intimate, more so than anything that has happened, including feeling his body pressed against hers, the casual way one of his legs has moved between hers, supporting her body in rest. It brings a smile to her face, even as she can feel her blood responding to the proximity of an attractive man.

He rubs circles into her hand, and she can feel his breath even out, feels her body relaxing into sleep.

\--

The light coming in the window is still muted, snow still falling from the sky when she wakes. She’s shifted in her sleep, her nose pressed against the cotton of Bellamy’s shirt, one of her knees trapped between his. She’s pressed close up against him, can feel his erection against her stomach, and she feels her brain light up at his reaction to her. She knows it’s a normal thing, but it’s – she’s responsible for it, and it’s exciting to her in a way she doesn’t often think about.

(She’s used to waking up with women, in part; her last three partners have all been women, and women do morning sex just as well as men, of course, but their desire is less – obvious, perhaps. This is exciting in a particular way that she revels in).

She’s shaken by the sudden impulse to kiss his forehead, wake him up with her lips. They’re – she only just met him, for one thing, but for another, it’s a very delicate situation they’re in, and she doesn’t want to do anything untoward. Still, she buries her head closer into his chest, breathes in the smell of clean laundry and boy. She dozes for a little longer, just until she starts to feel him shifting, pulling away from her ever so slightly.

When she blearily blinks open her eyes, he’s watching her, a slight smile on his face. “Merry Christmas Eve,” he says.

She grins. “Merry Christmas Eve to you, too.” She considers him, realizes how close she is, and moves away a bit. She’s not sure if he’s genuinely disappointed, or if it’s just the way the light hits his face. “I’m going to go rustle up breakfast, I think. Do you want anything?”

He considers, sticks a leg out into the cold air. “Power’s still out, yeah?”

She nods. “I’m pretty sure. Hopefully it comes back on soon, but the stove is gas, so we can still boil water and so on. You want coffee?”

“You might be my hero if you brew coffee,” he jokes. “Is your hot water heater on gas, too?” When she nods, he says, “Do you mind if I take a shower? I’ll make breakfast when I’m done.”

“Works for me,” she answers. “Do you need me to get anything started?”

“Nah, I’ll just make pancakes, it doesn’t take long.”

She looks at him for a minute. “From scratch or the box?”

He looks at her, horrified. “From scratch, are you kidding me?”

She throws up her arms in surrender. “Hey, it’s a legitimate and important question. I don’t even have the boxed mix, so if that was what you were relying on, I was going to say that _I_ would make breakfast.” 

He shakes his head, disgusted. “From the box, jesus christ. Who even says that?” 

She snorts. “Yeah, okay, Top Chef. Go take your shower.” She pushes him in the direction of the bathroom, huddles under the covers while he wanders out of the room. She gets a very nice view of his ass while he’s wandering around, and that wasn’t part of her plan when she kicked him out of bed, but it’s a nice side benefit. 

\--

When he steps out of the bathroom, his hair damply curled against his forehead, she passes him a cup of coffee, waves in the direction of sugar and milk. When he doesn’t take either, it’s an effort on her part not to raise her eyebrows in approval. She knows very few people who take their coffee black, and she’s always a little impressed and pleased.

When he starts opening her cabinets looking for ingredients, she directs him towards everything for pancakes, watches as he mixes everything together, and, waggling his eyebrows at her jokingly, dumps in half a bag of chocolate chips. “My hero,” she says, laughing.

They eat pancakes as they emerge hot off the griddle, and she eats as many as she can before she starts to feel like she can’t move anymore. Once everything cools off, she washes dishes while they argue about the continued relevance of Iron and Wine and other sad indie music (she’s pro sad indie music, while Bellamy is agnostic).

When everything is cleaned and put away, they migrate naturally back to the couch. Clarke gets ready to set up Planet Earth again, and Bellamy watches along with her, occasionally making jokes or observations about the animals or the narration. 

It’s surprisingly companionable, and Clarke finds herself sinking into Bellamy as they spend the afternoon watching TV and chatting.

It’s natural then, between their day and the ongoing lack of heat, for her to welcome him back into her bed. She turns into his chest almost immediately, and his arms come around her easily this time, finding their place along her sides.

It’s pretty absurd, she thinks, but she’s pretty sure she’s a little in love with someone she’s only known for two days. She wants to laugh at herself, but his hands stroke gently at her back, and she falls asleep instead.

\-- 

When she wakes the next morning, it’s because she’s sweating up a storm, finally roasting after a day and a half of not being able to feel her feet. She regretfully pushes at Bellamy, gently shoving him away from her so she can throw the blankets off, pull some of her layers off. 

Once she gets her sweatshirt over her head, it’s to see Bellamy looking at the strip of skin where her shirt had ridden up when she pulled her sweatshirt off. He reaches out to touch it, and she sinks into it, the feeling of his hands on her skin sending an entirely different sensation of heat through her body.

When she catches his eyes, they’ve gone dark, and she bends over him, catching his bottom lip in hers, kissing him slowly. He groans into her mouth when her hands slip under his shirt, nails working their way up his body. She smiles into the kiss, gently laps her tongue against his. The hot slide has her pushing into his touch, his hands coming around her waist to hold her close to him. She revels in the feeling of his fingers splayed across her ribcage.

She pulls back for a minute, resting her forehead against his and breathing slowly, pulling herself back together. She opens her eyes and catches his gaze, grinning at him. “So, that was fun,” she teases.

He grins back at her, nods, his nose nudging hers, making way for him to kiss her again. He nips at her lip, and she moans a little, feels his hands working their way north, thumbs across her nipples. “This okay?” he breathes. She nods, presses herself into his hands.

They stay like that, kissing languorously, hands exploring, until her stomach lets out a loud rumble. They pull apart, laughing, and she looks over at him, traces his features with her eyes, and yeah – she likes him a lot.

\--

They make breakfast together, and Clarke insists that they eat Christmas cookies (“It’s festive!” she argues), chocolate chip pancakes and coffee, her chasing the taste of coffee and cookies on his tongue. It’s easy, she thinks, to slip into this with him.

Everything with him has been remarkably easy, right down to talking about asinine things (are they going to get snowplowed out of here? Which airline is the worst?). Their Christmas is spent much in the same way they spent the previous two days, but when they settle in to finish Planet Earth, they’re wrapped up in each other, instead of at opposite ends of the couch. 

When they have a snowball fight later, it ends with Bellamy tackling Clarke into the wall of her fort and kissing her until she’s shivering from cold.

They don’t talk much about what’s going on, but when Bellamy calls Octavia later in the day (after they showered together, carefully soaping the other up, before rinsing so Bellamy could eat Clarke out on the bathroom counter), he grins at Clarke and tells O that they’re getting along extraordinarily well. When Clarke sends a selfie of her kissing Bellamy on the cheek, Octavia promptly calls her yelling (she was right, of course she was. There are few people Octavia knows better than her brother and her friend, and of course they’re bizarrely perfect for each other).

They fall into bed that night, Bellamy carefully stripping the layers off Clarke, kissing every piece of skin he can find. He spends his time playing with her breasts with tongue and hands until Clarke is whining desperately beneath him. He pauses long enough for her to put a condom on him, then slides into her. He goes slowly, lets her adjust to him, kissing her through it. When he suckles at the spot on her neck, she digs her heels into his ass, and he slides the rest of the way into her, her knees around his chest and her hair splayed out on the pillow behind her.

He watches her for a minute, thinks that she’s a vision of a woman. She smiles at him through her eyelashes, then nudges at his ass again, and he pulls out before thrusting back into her, driving her up the bed a ways. She squeaks, and he does it again, and again, until she’s grinding down against him, moaning against the sensations rising in her body. She gets one hand in between them, starts rubbing at her clit, and it’s not the first time a woman’s worked herself over while Bellamy was fucking them, but _goddamn_ she is stunning while she does it, a flush rising high in her cheeks, her mouth open in wordless pleasure.

He nips at her neck when she speeds up her hand, and she’s clenching on him before her hand stills and her back arches up against him. He thrusts sloppily against her once, twice, feels the snap in his spine as his vision whites out.

When he comes back down, she’s grinning up at him. “Merry Christmas,” she whispers, smacking a kiss to his cheek.

He grins back at her, the joy on her face infections. “Merry Christmas, Clarke.”

She gets up to pee, takes the condom to the trash; when she comes back, she curls around him, falls asleep with her nose pressed against his spine.

\--

The snow eventually stops, and Bellamy leaves to go visit Octavia, albeit belatedly. Clarke drives north to visit her mother and Marcus; when Bellamy lands, she’s standing at baggage claim with a sign that says “#nerd”, a delighted grin on her face. He’s kissing her before he even has a chance to think about it, so glad to be back in her arms. The feeling is mutual, he thinks, based on the way Clarke chases after his lips, gets one more kiss before flushing at the applause that’s ringing through the terminal.

It’s been a pretty perfect holiday season, lake effect snow and all, she thinks as they walk hand in hand out into the bright winter light.


End file.
